A Proposed IPC-Based Clustering and Applied to Technology Strategy Formulation

In order to aggregate the professional knowledge of examiners (of patent office) in the IPC code assignment and the innovative information within the patent documents, an IPC-based clustering is proposed for formulating the technology strategy. Technology strategy represents managers' efforts to think systematically about the role of technology in decisions affecting the long-term success of the organization. IPC-based clustering is utilized to generate the technical categories via the IPC and Abstract fields, while link analysis is adopted to generate the relation types for the whole dataset via the Abstract, Issue Date, and Assignee Company fields. During experiment, the technical categories have been identified using IPC-based clustering, and the technology strategies for significant companies have been formulated through link analysis. Finally, the technical categories and technology strategies will be provided to the managers and stakeholders for assisting their decision making.